Fiberglass Deck Repair

[Bobbystone]

Hey guys,

I repaired a bad crack under a stanchion. Cut away the damaged area. Made a plug of wood, Gooped everything up in West epoxy with colloidal silica, then layed in 6 sheets o biaxial cloth. Didn't get as much overlap as I would have liked, but the repair seems pretty tough. But it's UGLY. How do I go about fairing it, filling in some gaps and smoothing everything out where it looks decent. I know it's not going to be anywhere like perfect, but I'd like to get it a little prettier.

Thanks!

 

[tommays]

I was happy with the System 3 QuikFair


They sell it in a bunch of different size kits so you don't have to buy a huge amount

 

[PaulK]

If you're concerned about the overlap you probably don't want to grind it down, so fairing it in sounds like the best solution. Then you'll have to paint it. The epoxy will turn brown and opaque in the sun otherwise.

 

[RichB]

First off, is it flush? Also looks like some detail on the non-skid areas. When flush, use marine tex or gel coat. You can make a non-skid texture pattern from plaster of paris and stamp it in the wet marine tex.

 

[Bobbystone]

First off, is it flush? Also looks like some detail on the non-skid areas. When flush, use marine tex or gel coat. You can make a non-skid texture pattern from plaster of paris and stamp it in the wet marine tex.

It's not flush, so I assume gelcoat is out of the question. So should I use some sort of epoxy paint?

 

[Barnacle Bill]

Finishing your repair

Epoxy is wonderful stuff, but on a deck repair you can use polyester and save money and not have an issue with gelcoat incompatibility. You should use gelcoat to finish your repair unless your deck is already painted. Then use the same paint and color.
I think you said that you put wood under the stanchion. If so, it would have been better to use solid fiberglass so that if any water gets down the holes, you aren't going to eventually rot out the wood piece.
Since your repair has entered the nonskid area, the easiest thing to do is to mask off a square with nice rounded corners where your repair has obliterated the nonskid. You can use a form with other than right angles, if that looks better and more consistent with the stanchion base. You need to make the repair smooth either by initial, but brief grinding and then sanding and then you apply a polyester (white or nearly white) putty. When cured, sand that smooth the same level as the smooth area around the nonskid and then mix up gelcoat and colorants to match your existing gelcoat and catalyze it with about 12 drops per ounce of gelcoat. When thoroughly mixed, put it in a Preval sprayer (found in auto stores and better marine stores) and thin it to spray consistency either with acetone or styrene monomer (less likely to find in stores than acetone). Of course you want to mask off all areas you do not wish to spray and then spray your defined area. If you use a gelcoat with wax (available at your better marine stores), then you don't need to eliminate the air so it will cure (with products such as PVA). When cured, you wet sand it starting with 320, then 400 then 600 to get it real smooth. After that you buff it out with fiberglassing rubbing compound. Now so that you don't have something on one side that is not on the other, you can remove the stanchion from the same location on the opposite side and to a similar repair, but you don't have to grind it out like you had to on the other side. Just finish it off the same way and it will look like it belongs there.